HONESTY RINGS TRUE

Mary Ann Churchill's $30,000 family treasure was covered in butter in a discarded refrigerator: three diamond and two semiprecious rings.

And it took the honesty of a Hollywood shop owner for her to get her family heirlooms back.

Irwin Alterman, who owns Best Appliance of Broward at 5720 Johnson St., received a $1,000 reward for his good deed.

"I thought we would never see those rings again. Most people would have taken them to a pawnshop," said Churchill, 55, who lives in unincorporated Dade County near Miami Lakes. The rings belong to Churchill and her sister, Vara Viccellio, 67, who lives with her.

The incident happened on Tuesday morning when Best Appliance picked up her old refrigerator, after she had bought a new one. Ten minutes after the appliance was gone, Churchill said, she remembered the rings. She kept them in a tiny eyedropper box next to her insulin in the butter bin.

They are family heirlooms. One piece of jewelry had diamonds from both her grandmother's engagement ring and her mother's wedding band.

Churchill called the shop.

At first, workers couldn't find the jewelry. But Alterman heard about her call and decided to take another look.

He found the gems in the little box covered with melted butter.

"I hope and pray their business increases many times over because they are honest," she said.

On Wednesday, she went to a bank and rented a safe-deposit box, "where the rings should have been in the first place," she said.

She wrote the word "honesty" on Alterman's reward check. He shared the money with seven employees - a truck driver, repairmen and technicians.

Churchill, a religious woman who moved to South Florida from Chicago in April, also blessed Alterman's business.

"It feels good for a change," said Alterman, a native New Yorker. "We usually get cursed out."